Adam McFarland

I’m lucky enough to have somehow gotten on the American Management Association’s list of bloggers to send advanced copies of books to. I’d say I get around ten requests a year from the AMA and other organizations asking me to review their books. While always flattered, I’ve been saying no more and more recently because of my last experience. But when the AMA contacted me with a book entitled Internet Riches I had to say yes. My initial thought was “this is going to be great, I’m going to tear this crappy book apart.” Alas, it actually is a pretty damn good book despite the super cheesy title.

What it is:

• Author Scott Fox has started several online businesses and has consulted with the likes of Larry King and Bill O’Reilly. He provides a blueprint for anyone to start their own online business.

The Pros:

• He provides a very accurate, very in-depth history of how companies have made money on the internet in the past and how the internet has evolved over it’s short history.
• He provides details on everything from choosing a domain name to finding a web host to marketing your business. The step-by-step instructions could be followed by anyone who can write an email. Honestly, I kept looking to poke holes but everything essentially aligns with what I would tell a first time web entrepreneur.
• He mentions eBay, but - unlike most of these type of books - is very realistic about the ups and downs of eBay. It can be great for your business, but usually isn’t going to make you millions by itself.
• He preaches over and over the importance of just getting your product to market. So many people spend months/years developing technology instead of testing their business in the market and developing and growing based upon how it goes. You should always be focused on doing the absolute minimum to get your product/service in front of real live customers. Scott and I agree on this, but I’m not sure everyone in business does.

The Cons:

• The title and the cover. Both are ultra-cheesy and look like they should be featured on a late-night infomercial between Ron Popeil and Tony Little. Thankfully once you open the cover it gets better. It really is a great “reference book” so it should carry a title like How to Build an Internet Business from Scratch…or something less corny.

Who should buy the book:

• Any first time web entrepreneur. Along with the now slightly out-dated big blue book and a few others, this is a great way to get started on the ins and outs of e-businesses. If you’re already pretty tech/web savvy, it might get boring or redundant at times, but you’ll still get a bunch of great info.

Who shouldn’t buy the book:

• Anyone who owns a web business or has spent considerable time working for one. I realize I’m not the target market, but I didn’t learn one thing that I could directly apply to our business. Again - lot’s of great info…just nothing I haven’t read myself in my 4+ years reading books, blogs, newsletters, etc related to online business.

In this day and age there’s an overload of information available to us without much effort to get it. If you’re not careful you can spend all day reading books and magazines and blogs, or watching YouTube, DVDs, and TV. Pretty soon the only thing you DO is consume and you forget to actually do anything yourself.

The answer is certainly not to cut yourself off from the world. Business owner or not, the information available to us you can help improve the quality of your life. And as a budding entrepreneur, the information available to you can give your business the competitive advantages that it needs to thrive. That’s why Mark Cuban professes to read three hours a day. That one great idea he gets from a magazine he spends hours reading will pay off a thousand times over for his business.

The challenge then is to limit the crap you consume and focus on what’s actually going to help you. You know, so you can actually make progress with your company. I might not spend three hours a day like Mark Cuban, but I’d say I read close to two a day if you factor in the non-business stuff. I don’t think most people will care too much that I read Fire Joe Morgan for my daily baseball fix, but here’s a list of the business-related media that has made it through my crap filter:

Blogs

I read blogs for two reasons: to stay up to date with the latest tech news, and to follow small niche entrepreneur blogs of people I think are in the same boat as myself. I add all of my RSS feeds to Google Reader, which I check once or twice a day. Here are my favorites:

• SEO Book Blog - Aaron Wall is the best SEO writer out there in my opinion, and his blog offers tremendous insight into the latest search engine optimization and web marketing trends
• Blog Maverick - the aforementioned Mark Cuban shares his insights into the tech industry, the entertainment industry, and being an entrepreneur in general. The most down-to-earth and accessible billionaire that I know of.
• Guru Gilbert - the blog of fellow young entrepreneur Adam Gilbert. He and I have a ton of stuff in common, and I’ve gotten to know him a lot better recently after he hired us to program his blog design into WordPress. He has the extreme fire and passion that differentiates entrepreneurs from everyone else, and it’s reflected in the quality of his posts.
• James Hong - founder of HOTorNOT.com, he only posts once every few months, but his opinions on business and technology are priceless.
• Lifehacker - all sorts of interesting tech-savvy productivity tips. I’m also partial to them because they - unlike let’s say TechCrunch - covered iPrioritize and Music-Alerts, thus passing my sites a ton of traffic and new users.
• NevBlog - another young entrepreneur who is my age. The blog originally caught my attention because Nev posted every single cent he made online publicly on his sidebar (now gone), but I’ve continued to read because his unique business insights - particularly his e-commerce posts related to his sites - are extremely honest and helpful. Just the fact that he was willing to post his financials online shows me he’s got balls that most people my age don’t.
• Guy Kawasaki - much like Mark Cuban, Guy is one of the uber-successful entrepreneur role models that I really look up to. Famous for evangelizing Apple, he’s now a VC who is brutally honest about what it takes to run a tech startup. He also has a great balance of posts: one day he’ll talk about a VC pitch, the next it’ll be about human happiness, and the next about social entrepreneurship.
• Trizoko - the owners of Trizle have the most unique writing style of anything I’ve ever read. They also have a brilliant philosophy about business success. A must read for any business owner.
• Webware - a great Web2.0 blog….much preferred over TechCrunch in my world.
• E-Commerce Times - tech news that’s geared toward e-commerce.
• SitePoint Newsletters - OK, can’t add these to my RSS reader. The only email newsletters I still read, they offer great insight into running a web design business - including programming tips, design tips, and business strategies.

Magazines

After a long day, one of my favorite things to do is shut down my computer, throw on some baseball/basketball/football/hockey, and pick up a good business magazine. My mind is relaxed and free so this is when I usually let my mind wander, and consequently this is when I usually get my best ideas.

Entrepreneur Magazine is now officially off this list - a good resource for entrepreneurs when they’re just getting started, but unless you own a franchise or sell on eBay there isn’t much recurring info worth reading (except Guy Kawasaki’s column).

• Inc. - hands down the best business magazine. Their cover stories are great, but recurring columns like Street Smarts, Case Study, How I Did It, Business for Sale, and Elevator Pitch are absolutely brilliantly written.
• Fast Company - you’ll never get more information from a magazine than you do from Fast Company. Their cover stories are ridiculously in-depth and well written, and there are four or five of these stories every magazine. It’s like reading five mini-business books every issue.
• Fortune - the latest addition to the group, I find it extraordinarily well written and filled with interviews that Inc. or Fast Company probably couldn’t get (case in point: the first issue had that fantastic Melinda Gates story and also has an exclusive with the new CEO of GM).

Books

I’ve been reading less and less business books. Most of the ones I have read were advanced copies sent to me for free that I review on this blog. I just don’t need the ‘rah-rah’ kick in the ass that most entrepreneur related books provide. I’ve already started my company. We understand how to be efficient with our business processes. We understand the sacrifices involved in the whole matter. Those books were useful a few years ago, but not so much anymore.

However, there are a few great books that I read this year that I’d recommend to any business owner or aspiring business owner:

• Good to Great by Jim Collins - the most exhaustive study ever performed on what makes a company great…and a lot of the conclusions are counter-intuitive to what you’d initially think.
• The 4-Hour Workweek by Tim Ferriss - an extremely unique look at business and life that blows away any pre-conceived notions that you have about either. You probably won’t follow the step-by-step guide outlined in the book, but even adopting a few techniques from the book will drastically improve your life and your business.
• Getting Real by 37 Signals - available online for free (or in paperback for $25), this book is the definitive guide to web software development.  37 Signals has mastered the art of what’s important in a business and what isn’t, and this book will challenge your conventional thoughts about what is really necessary.

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Hope that my list gives your reading routine a much needed kick in the butt!

I’ve mentioned before that one of the cool things about having a blog that does a decent job ranking high in search engines is that every time a PR company is looking to hype up a new book and Joe Q PR-guy Google’s “entrepreneur blog” I show up. So I get quite a few inquiries and I gladly accept most of them (I mean, who wouldn’t want free books?). Joel Freeman was very accommodating and accessible when I got a copy of his book, but I thought this latest book was pretty creative in their PR.

The book is The Inside Advantage: the Strategy That Unlocks the Hidden Growth in Your Business by Robert Bloom. The book arrived in ONE day, with a lock around it so I can “unlock” my businesses hidden growth potential.

Very creative!  Taking the idea of “unlocking” your businesses potential and putting a lock on the cover art is one thing, but adding the master lock to the package it was delivered in is a really nice touch.  To add to the mystique, the combination was not included. I was able to slip the lock off to read the book, but I really could use a new lock for the gym so I’m going to try to crack the lock myself….should be fun!

Where the F$%# is the book review? I decided not to review the book because it would be an utterly biased view. I like two types of business books: ones where entrepreneurs tell their stories and I can enjoy and appreciate their retrospective view of their experiences, and books that have hard data and draw conclusions that change my perception on business. This book is neither. For the average business owner who reads one book a year, or the new business owner looking to get their hands on sound techniques for getting the best out of their business, this is a great book. Unfortunately I read a lot of business books. The day before I read The Inside Advantage I finished Good to Great - the single most comprehensive study of businesses and what makes them great. Coming from that book, this one just didn’t do it for me.

I think I need to start minimizing the business books I read….

Every few months I’m contacted by an author/publicist and asked to review their new book. It’s one of my favorite perks about having a semi-popular entrepreneurship blog - they need book reviews so they send me a free book and I get the pleasure of reviewing it. I had one publisher tell me that my blog post generated more sales than their radio campaign, and I take great pride in that. Why am I telling you this? Because the most recent book - If Nobody Loves You Create The Demand by Joel Freeman was one of my favorites. But before I get to that, I want to thank Joel for his personal approach to contacting me.

Most of the time I get sent a mass email from a publishing company essentially saying “Our author just wrote a new book about entrepreneurship, we think your readers would be interested in it, can we send you a copy?” I always say yes, review the book promptly, and send them a thank you note. And that’s great. A few times, particularly in the case of the great book by Barry Moltz, I struck up a conversation with the author and now consider them an acquaintance.

Joel Freeman took the personalized customer service to another level. HE sent me the initial email, HE replied to me, and HE mailed me the book. How do I know - because the envelope had a personal note, his business card had his personal cell hand written in (great technique for personalization by the way), and the book was autographed with a personal message. I received the book Saturday and those touches blew me away. I picked it up Sunday, finished it last night (I’m a real fast reader) and here I am reviewing it today. Anyone who thinks that personalization doesn’t matter should take note of this post: I just spent a few paragraphs endorsing Mr. Freeman as a person BEFORE talking about his book. How much more likely are you to purchase his book now that you know he’s the type of guy who cares to go the extra mile?

On to the book review. Although I am a fast reader, I have to be engaged to not put a book down for hours at a time, and Joel Freeman definitely accomplishes that. It’s hard to say what the book is about: it’s not a marketing book (although I learned some interesting marketing techniques), it’s not a business plan book (although it discussed planning strategies), and it’s not an autobiography (although it covered a lot of Joel’s personal experiences). Essentially it’s a book about being an entrepreneur…the entire scope of being an entrepreneur. It’s a tough thing to do - I try it with this blog - but Mr. Freeman blends every aspect of being an entrepreneur into one. Because it’s not just about career happiness and making a lot of money, becoming an entrepreneur makes you ask the tough questions like: what is the purpose of life? how can I best use my God given talents to improve the world? how will my personal life blend with my business life if I start my own company?

You may never know for sure the answers to those questions. But to be a great entrepreneur you need to grapple with them and come to your own conclusions before embarking on your journey. Those who use their talents to change the world are much more likely to be successful, happy, and rich than those who simply want to make a lot of money. People who chase the money won’t make it in most cases because the focus, determination, passion, and sacrifice that all great entrepreneurs have made is hard to justify if money is your only goal.

Aside from the fact that Freeman quotes The Screwtape Letters by C.S. Lews (one of my all-time favorite books), there are two things that I really loved about the book:

1. The baseball analogy. I am probably as guilty of this as anyone who ever walked the planet. I want to hit a “home run” with every project I work on. I want to change the world for the better with every second I spend. It’s a great thing, but it doesn’t pay the bills. I’ve reached the same conclusion Dr. Freeman has - spend 70-80% of your time on “singles” and “doubles” and spend the rest of your time swinging for the fences. Most great businesses aren’t home runs, so you don’t want to become Jeremy Burnitz and swing for the fences all day long. Google has been the most successful at adopting this with their 70-20-10 program (70% of your time on core projects, 20% on side projects, and 10% on whatever the hell you want). My partners and I always classify all of our projects in terms of baseball, and I think it’s pretty cool that someone else feels the same way.
2. The non-profit factor. Freeman encourages every entrepreneur to form a non profit. The tax benefits help your bottom line, but the good you do for the world will likely outlast the for-profit work you do. Who knows, you might even become the next Bill Gates/Warren Buffet. There’s a reason that those guys are devoting their lives to helping cure disease and poverty - only so much gratification can be had from money. True happiness for those with lots of money does not come from their money. A lesson for every entrepreneur.

Why did I love those two things so much when there are so many other interesting chapters in the book? Because that’s what I/we aspire to be at Pure Adapt. We want to set up the systems and processes so that the “singles” and “doubles” happen without our work, and we can focus on swinging for the fences and giving back to the community. It’s nice to see other entrepreneurs who feel the same way.

I  recommend this book to any new and aspiring entrepreneur, or a current entrepreneur looking for some guidance. If you don’t know what you want to do with your life, this book will ask the questions to help you progress. If you do, it will reinvigorate you and provide reassurance that you have chosen the correct path.